observations, comments, findings—factual and fictional— beliefs, and thoughts about the world and its creatures started and maintained as a way to keep amuse and possibly edify the world's pilgrims on their journey to we know not where

Sunday, December 18, 2005

King George

The King came out all a swagger yesterday to announce, in effect: I set the National Security Agency to spying on individuals, and I intend to keep doing so. I don't care who says it's illegal. I dare Congress or anyone else to do anything about it. I am King George, chosen by the Lord to fight the terrior heatherns. Anyone who challenges me defies God's will and betrays me. In yer face....

He figures Congress will cave if only because his own party won't challenge him. Various Democrats will huff and puff and then roll over. Thus, the putsch is made.

I'd like to be wrong and see enough people in Congress rise up to impeach, but I fear they won't. As Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer report in today's Washington Post the NSA spying is just part of a larger program of domestic surveillance, involving NSA, FBI, DoD, and who knows who else. At least some of it violates various laws the Bushy has sworn to uphold, not that he cares for laws. This man, we have been repeatedly told, bases his decisions on his "gut," his instinct; otherwise, he remains deliberately ignorant.

And he gets away with it--time and again.

Executive editor Bill Keller of the New York Times issued a statement Friday, 12/16, attributing the long delay in publishing the NSA story to real journalistic concerns for truth, accuracy, and national security. Paul Farhi of the Washington Post offers a slightly different take, complete with the observation that the revelation was coming out no matter in February in a book by James Risen, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. It appears that the Times editors forgot their responsibility to print the news, so the people can decide.

1 comment:

A ancient colleague of mine (an american) had said to me many years ago that a politician gets corrupted already when starting up trying to get elected to a local council. Those who make it further are therefore just a sold out shells of human beings and they should not be expected to have any guts to stand up for anything but their own profit. If the american people are patiently waiting for their elected reps to sort this out, they are in for a long and hopeless wait.